The factual background
The following brief factual summary, incorporating the Court’s findings of fact, will suffice:
Beginning in 1940, the predecessors of the plaintiffs, a group of commonly owned and controlled corporations collectively known as the Marvel Comics Group (the “Group”) published various periodical magazines, including comic books. Each comic book issue featured at least one fictitious cartoon character, but the issues frequently included material concerning characters featured in other publications of the Group. However, all of the writers, artists and editors involved in the creation of every issue were employees of one or more corporations in the Group.
The copyright in each issue was initially secured by publication with an appropriate copyright notice, and the claim to copyright was duly registered by the Copyright Office as a “periodical” in Class B, in the name of the publishing corporation as proprietor.
Beginning in September 1967 (within the last year of the respective 28-year terms of the original copyrights, as required by 17 U.S.C. § 24), the successor plaintiff filed an application for registration of its claim to renewal and extension of the copyright in each issue, the application being filed on the appropriate renewal application, Form R, identifying the renewal applicant as “Proprietor of copyright in a composite work made for hire,” and being accompanied by the statutory fee of $4.00.
The Copyright Office rejected the application on the ground that the characterizations of the publication as a “composite work” and as a “work made for hire” were contradictory. The Office indicated that it would accept an application which identified the publication as either one or the other, but not both. It also indicated that it would accept two applications for each issue, one identifying the publication as a “composite work” and the other as a “work made for hire,” provided each application was accompanied by a $4.00 fee. Plaintiffs offered to submit two such applications with a single $4.00 fee, but the Office insisted upon a $4.00 fee for each application.
After a lengthy exchange of correspondence, and at least one meeting between plaintiffs’ counsel and officials of the office, without resolution of the controversy, on May 14, 1971 the Librarian of Congress wrote the President and asked that the Attorney General be directed to render an opinion on the question “whether the Register of Copyrights may refuse to make registration of a claim to renewal copyright when the application states that the claim is founded on two bases that the Register considers to be contradictory.” The letter was accompanied by a memorandum prepared by the Copyright Office setting forth the relevant facts and summarizing the contentions of the parties.
Three years elapsed before the Attorney General on June 10, 1974 rendered a 16-page written opinion concluding that the categories “composite work” and “work made for hire” were mutually exclusive and that the Register of Copyrights had the authority to decline registration of a renewal claim asserting these inconsistent bases. The present action followed a year and a half later.
The relevant statutes
Under Section 24[1] a copyright has an initial term of 28 years from the date of
- ↑ 17 U.S.C. § 24 reads in pertinent part as follows:
“The copyright secured by this title shall endure for twenty-eight years from the date of first publication …: Provided, That in the case of any posthumous work or of any periodical, cyclopedic, or other composite work upon which the copyright was originally secured by the proprietor thereof, or of any work copyrighted by a corporate body (otherwise than as assignee or licensee of the individual author) or by an employer for whom such work is made for hire, the proprietor of such copyright shall be entitled to a renewal and extension of the copyright in such work …: And provided further, That in the case of any other copyrighted work, including a contribution by an individual author to a periodical or to a cyclopedic or other composite work, the author of such work [or his designated heirs or representatives] shall be entitled to a renewal ….”
